Lublin: przyczynek do topologii palimpsestu
Lublin: a Contribution to the Topology of a Palimpsest

Summary/Abstract: This sketch is an attempt at a description and semiotic interpretation of a structure created by mutually permeating texts in the spirit of a palimpsest, with a keystone in the form of the Seer from Lublin and the town of Lublin as such. The overlapping texts include, i.a. Chassidic stories about the Seer, the “Chassidic chronicle” Gog and Magog by Martin Buber, the essay Oko cadyka by Władysław Panas, poetic identifications by Józef Czechowicz, the topography of the non-existant Jewish district in Lublin, figures of absence in the town’s substance, curious manifestations of non-existence, traces of the touch of radical evil. The texts constitute a story that emerges in an empty space in the wake of another space (replacing silent emptiness), filling it with the real presence of “writing” and ensuing reading (a form of reading the world and a lesson of existence). The semiotic potential of this tale – focused especially in Oko cadyka – is the prime object and canvas of reflections about Lublin, presented in the sketch as a semiotic continuum spanning from a concrete place in the topography of the town to domains indicated by the mystic intuitions of the Seer.

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